Dafen village: Art for money's sake

xinhuanet has a new article about "Dafen village: Art for money's sake" by Xiong Tong

BEIJING, May 21 -- Dafen has village grown into the world center of art reproduction, China Daily's Li Xinzhu reports.

As copies of the Mona Lisa go, you don't get them much bigger than this. Nor does it usually take so many painters to recreate the masterpiece. And just to make the project even more bizarre, this version of the Mona Lisa sits horizontally on the side of a building.

More than 500 artists from the village of Dafen, near the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province, created a 43-meter-long by 7-meter-high Mona Lisa in 999 individual paintings, all of which have been set into the faade of the Shenzhen city Case Pavilion in the Urban Best Practices Area (UBPA) of the Expo Garden.

The artwork is one of 16 exhibits brought by Shenzhen city to the Expo 2010 Shanghai to its Case Pavilion in the UBPA - were innovative practices of cities around the world dedicated to improving urban life are on show.